PARIS (IDN) – Financing is key in the fight against climate change, said delegate after delegate at the One Planet Summit in Paris December 12, and this meeting was all about the money: where to invest it and where not.

The World Bank Group announced that it would not be financing upstream oil and gas after 2019, except for certain projects in the “poorest countries”, where there is a clear benefit in terms of energy access for those in need.

“The policy will change and change dramatically,” said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim.

BRUSSELS (IDN) – The 79-nation African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States has welcomed the European Union's decision to launch a coordinated action jointly with the United Nations to counter the illegal killing and trafficking of wildlife in Southern and Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

As part of a 30 million Euro (35.3 million U.S. dollars) intervention, the European Union (EU) has signed a 17.2 million Euro (20.35 million U.S. dollars) agreement with three United Nations (UN) agencies – CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and CMS, the Convention on Migratory Species.

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – As Kazakhstan prepares to chair the UN Security Council for the month of January 2018, the Central Asian country's contribution in the process of de-escalation of the nearly seven-year old conflict in Syria has been commended during Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov's recent visits to London and Vienna.

The applause has come in the run-up to the eighth round of the Astana Process on Syrian peace meant to supplement UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva, in Kazakhstan's capital city, on December 21-22. The first round of talks was launched in January 2017, nearly one month after the foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey, and Russia agreed to do so pursuant to the UN Resolution 2336 adopted December 31, 2016.

NEW YORK (IDN) – India has scored a "historic" victory over Britain, one of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, with the re-election of Justice Dalveer Bhandari to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), principal judicial organ of the United Nations. The win is historic because it’s the first time since 1946 that no judge from a P5 member is a part of the ICJ, which has its seat in The Hague, the Netherlands.

After Britain pulled out its candidate Christopher Greenwood before the 12th round of voting on November 20, Justice Bhandari won the last of five seats for which elections were held. He received 183 votes in the 193-member General Assembly and secured all the 15 votes in the Security Council after separate and simultaneous elections were held at the UN headquarters in New York.

The writer is editor and publisher of Norway's news site, newsinenglish.no. This report, which originally appeared with the headline Peace Prize puts squeeze on Norway, is being reproduced courtesy of the news site. – The Editor

OSLO (IDN-INPS) - Nobel Peace Prize Day in Oslo dawned with clear and sunny skies on Sunday, but not everyone was celebrating. The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) challenges Norwegian leaders to finally support a ban themselves, and now pressure is building on them to do so.

The Peace Prize to ICAN thrust the prize’s own home country into a difficult, even embarrassing, position. Norway, in line with its NATO allies and other nuclear powers, have refused to support or sign a UN treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons that was adopted by 122 other nations last summer. Critics called that shameful.

NAIROBI (IDN) – African and Asian countries face a huge challenge in protecting their wildlife from the illegal killing and trafficking that has already endangered some species.

Over the years, national and regional efforts to combat the threat have met with mixed success and wildlife and their products continue to be sold in many countries around the world.

Figures released in March 2017 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) under its Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme showed that by 2016 the trend in poaching of African elephants – which had increased steadily since 2006, peaking in 2011– had been halted and stabilised. Nevertheless, the levels of illegal killing still remained unacceptably high overall.

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – U.S. President Donald Trump's decision recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been widely welcomed in Israel but it has also caused much anger among Palestinians and anxiety across the Middle East and beyond – at the United Nations too.

On December 6, Trump announced that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. In this recognition, he said that final status issues, including the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty, remain for the parties to determine.

NAIROBI (IDN) – Amid a cacophony of voices, interests and expectations, the third high level United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), held in Nairobi from December 4-6, had a common denominator – a sense of strong desire and willingness among delegations for action to ensure a pollution-free world.

Some walked the talk. Indeed, in a bid to support the war against pollution, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Norway, Republic of Korea, Sweden and Switzerland committed 35 million dollars to the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE), a partnership of five UN agencies to support countries in greening their economies and tackling environmental challenges, while promoting better jobs and stable economic growth.

ANKARA (IDN) – "Solutions for the South by the South” was the recurring theme that resounded throughout the duration of the Global South-South Development Expo 2017 (GSSD Expo) from November 27 to 30, 2017 in Antalya, the largest Turkish city on the Mediterranean coast.

This landmark event of the United Nations (UN) system solely for the global South was held in the lead up to the Second High-level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation to be convened in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in March 2019. The Conference will mark the 40th anniversary of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA+40) for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries. A High-Level Forum of National Directors-General for Development Cooperation discussed during the Expo insights and proposals for the preparatory process of the 2019 conference.

GENEVA (IDN | UNFOLD ZERO) – Amid menacing tensions between the United States and North Korea in the aftermath of Pyongyang testing a long-range missile that is potentially capable of hitting the entire mainland U.S., young academics and activists from around the world are asking world leaders to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons being deployed and to support United Nations initiatives for nuclear disarmament, including the High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament to take place in 2018.

NEW YORK (IDN) – In the run-up to Kazakhstan assuming the UN Security Council's rotating presidency for January 2018, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov has accentuated that the Central Asian country stands for the creation of a model of a regional zone of peace, security and cooperation in Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Kazakhstan is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for 2017-2018, and it chairs the Council's Committees 1988 on the Taliban movement and 1267 on ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida.

VIENNA (IDN) – "We are in a time when multilateralism is being challenged. Your participation in this General Conference reaffirms the relevance of UNIDO's work to your governments and the people on the ground," said Miroslav Lajčák, Slovakia's Foreign Minister and President of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly until September 2018.

Lajčák was speaking at the opening session of the conference in Vienna, on November 27, nearly one month before the central European country ceases to be a member of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). In a letter signed by him as Foreign Minister, Slovakia had denounced the UNIDO convention in December 2016. Subsequently, it will cease to be a member of the Organization on December 31, 2017.

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – Seventy years since the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine as Resolution 181 (1947) on November 29, 1947 a hectic debate in the General Assembly has reaffirmed that peace in the Middle East is nowhere on the horizon.

In fact, several delegates voiced concern that the texts of six resolutions the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted on November 30 "perpetuated a one-sided view that isolated and targeted a single Member State," Israel. Two of the resolutions declared Israel’s actions in the Syrian Golan and East Jerusalem "null and void."

VIENNA (IDN) – Li Yong has a 'dream', the dream to give young people, living in similarly poor conditions as he experienced in China in his childhood, an opportunity to play a part in "the global fight against poverty".

Li was re-appointed head of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) on November 27 for four years by the Organization's supreme policy-making organ, the General Conference (GC) where member states meet once every two years.

He was first elected in June 2013 as the UNIDO's Director General, becoming as Xinhua noted, "the first United Nations (UN) agency chief from the Chinese mainland".

WANG Shouwen is China’s Vice-Minister of Commerce. Following are extensive excerpts from his address at the 17th session of the UNIDO General Conference'Partnering for Impact: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals' in Vienna on November 27, 2017 – after Li Yong was re-appointed for a second term (2017-2021) as the Director General of the Organization. – The Editor